What if we just let them be creative?

If you're one of the people who reads my blog you know I love fostering creativity in the kids I work with.

My feelings about this, like so many other parts of my job, are rooted in my own childhood. My wish to treat kids with respect. To appreciate what's unique about each one of them, meet them wherever they are, and build a relationship.

In this case, it's about art. More specifically, the ability to create art.

Growing up, I didn't have things at home to use for creative purposes. No paint. No construction paper, regular paper, colored pencils, scissors, art books. Didn't knit, didn't sew, didn't have a creative outlet.

Sometimes a craft craze** would visit our town, and most of my friends and their moms would go to someone's house and make whatever it was. Bring a few bucks, some cookies, do some socializing and make and take a little project.

**the people who lived in that town were like lemmings back then. 
They're still like lemmings.
In so many ways. 
It's weird. 

Mass church migrations... they're searching for something they're not finding, and instead of figuring out that what they're looking for doesn't exist, they think changing churches is going to help them find it. 

Traveling salesmen come to town and sell them heat alarms for their doublewides. (hint... if the temperature in the ceiling is high enough to set them off, your trailer has already burned). Walk in bathtubs. Magical wall sockets that help you "save electricity." Multilevel marketing... Amway, Melelauca, Avon... All the guy has to do is get one person to buy, then everyone else lines up holding their cash out and begging to be the next sucker. 

This is how my parents ended up buying a time share. One of their teacher acquaintances bought in, and the lemming effect took over. It wasn't long before most of the people Dad had worked with also bought into the time share scam. And while I appreciate that we were able to use it, it was a large monthly payment for my parents. Like 400 a month for 'fees'. Dad CALLED the time share company and asked how he could get one.

Oh shit, I'm digressing.

So the fee for these little crafty evenings was usually just the cost of supplies.
There was some lady who taught people how to weave fish from ribbon and make a mobile. 

A 'cold ceramic' class (it was really just plaster stuff) where people got to paint and decorate little figurines. 

A bunch of ornaments made from 'swiss straw'. Colored strips of a straw-like material, held on to styrofoam balls with wig pins and with beads added here and there. Crass and tasteless. 
I still wanted to make them, though. I wanted to feel the colored strips sliding through my fingers, hold the styrofoam and push the pins into it.

Mom made mop dolls. She bought makeup (blush and eye shadow) for this tacky doll project, but I couldn't get a package of new underwear. Nope, three pairs to last me a whole school year. Probably the reason I have at least 30 pair now. More digression.

Mom and her craft pack of church ladies made many interesting things. 
Most of those things were really cheesy, and I wouldn't be interested in them now, but I was starved for things like that then.

Once when Mom was getting ready for one of her evenings out, I asked if I could go, too. 
The answer, "We can't afford it."

So Mom went to little classes, nominally priced for her, but much too expensive to include her daughter. 

It didn't hurt my feelings as much then as it does now, funnily enough. I mean, I didn't like being told I wasn't welcome, but I was so accustomed to not having things I wanted (not a whole lot of things I needed, either) that it didn't upset me. Now, I just add it to the ever-growing list of things that kept my spirits down and let me know I wasn't a person of value to them.

Those memories did cause me to do things differently for my own children, though. 
If they asked for specific art supplies or crafty stuff, I got it for them. When they had the urge to create, we had whatever they needed to do so.

And in my old age, I've become quite the craft stuff hoarder. 
Quite a lot of it has ended up at my school, but I have many things here at home, too. Sometimes I indulge the urge to make arty things.
I paint a picture or I craft or make little gifts or cards.
If I want to do those things, I have all the supplies I could ever need. If I need something, I can usually afford to purchase it.

The feelings of the teenage girl I used to be accompany me everywhere, even to work.

I like to have projects for the kids. 
It's my job, of course. 
But I love being able to provide the experiences for them. 
I like watching their discoveries and seeing the enjoyment they get from our activities.

Sometimes it's a craft or art, sometimes science experiments. 
Oh. Let's not forget the occasional trash day. This happens when I've saved up enough cereal box type cardboard, paper towel tubes, packaging materials. I bring out a cardboard box or two, full, and hand them masking tape. They make all sorts of interesting things. It always makes me smile when one of them asks when our next trash day will be. This year I plan to ask families to save specific types of trash so we can do trash day more often. We only did it twice last school year.

They like having something they can hold in their hand to show their parents at pick up. 
It generates so much excitement when they can't wait to show Mom or Dad what they made. Those interactions are the time for a kid/parent to reconnect and when it's a positive meeting, it sets the tone for the whole evening.

So yeah, I have a lot of reasons for providing some creative outlet for my young humans. It is a privilege to do the work I do.  

I'm not the boss, though. If I've given them supplies and a general idea of what they can or should not do with them and they ask if they can make something else, I say yes. 

For example, we occasionally get out the stamp pads and do fingerprint art. I have some Ed Emberley books, which I have cut up (I know, I know,  sacrilege). Each page is in a page protector. That way, I don't have 20 kids trying to use the same book. I keep the pages in a binder, and when we do that project, I get them out and put them on a table next to the activity. The kids can go to the table, pick out the one they'd like to make and take their page with them to the work table.

Once they get to know me, they don't even ask if they can make something different. 

They need to follow the basic rules, "Don't add water to the stamp pads, use the little condiment cup full of water to rinse your fingertip between colors, wipe it off on a paper towel. When your project is dry, here are pens to make the details."

But my rule for all of our projects is really a very simple statement.
"If you made something you like, you did it right."

So they find various things to use with the stamp pads. LEGO, pattern blocks, the edges of little toys. Whatever. It's water based color, so it washes.

I'm not trying to control their experience. It isn't mine to control. I won't tell them they're doing it wrong or try to change the outcome, although I've been known to fix little sequins or googly eyes that are sliding off the page because the child has used eleven tablespoons of glue.

So I was wandering around the internet last night and came across this gem from a former elementary art teacher. 

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“The jellyfish problem” is a real example from my days in the classroom! 
It seemed harmless at the time, but by the end of class, those jellyfish tentacles had completely thrown off their compositions, they couldn’t practice the repetition techniques I was trying to teach, and worst of all - half the class was asking if THEY could draw something different too.
That’s when I realized → my job isn’t to make every student happy in the moment. It’s to give them the structured learning they need to actually grow as artists.
And most kids get genuinely excited when they understand there’s a real purpose behind the lesson!
It took me years to learn that consistency isn’t mean. It’s actually the most caring thing you can do for your students’ artistic development.
How do you handle students who want to switch things up?
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It made me sad for the kids who were subjected to the attitude. It's amazing how fast kids can get to the point of not trying new things. Not looking at art supplies as something with infinite possibilities. I see that as a tragedy, not as a win for teaching.

I'm left remembering the Kindergarten teacher from years and years ago who told a small human who had the audacity to paint his cat pink, "We're not using our imaginations right now. We are painting."